On my usual trawls of YouTube, I came across The Star Wars Holiday Special, and I'm wondering if this is what I saw as a very young kid on TV in Australia, perhaps in the very early 80's. I'm scrolling through the horrific Holiday Special but I can't find the scene I can remember.

I seem to remember young Wookies (check) and I think Stormtroopers go through their house, looking for something. A stormtrooper rips open one of the young wookie's stuffed toys (is that a bantha?). Later, the young wookie returns and sadly picks up his torn toy. Is this the Holiday Special?

I never even got to see the whole thing, because I was watching at my grandmother's house. She was disturbed by the 'hairy things' and despite my insistence that I knew what this was, and it was what I wanted to watch, she turned off the TV!

Logged

"Many others since have tried & failed at making a watchable parasite slug movie" - LilCerberus

I seem to remember young Wookies (check) and I think Stormtroopers go through their house, looking for something. A stormtrooper rips open one of the young wookie's stuffed toys (is that a bantha?). Later, the young wookie returns and sadly picks up his torn toy. Is this the Holiday Special?

Yes, that is the Holiday Special. I may have watched it on TV as a kid when it first came out, but November 1978 was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away for me. I did see it in 2006 after the infamous Conan O'Brien show where he interviewed Harrison Ford about it. The look on Mr. Ford's face after a clip of the TV special was shown piqued my curiosity, so I managed to track it down online, which was a little tougher to do than YouTube back then.

Seriously though, this is really as bad as people say it is? I don't want to waste my time by daring to sit through it all.

Well, it isn't one of those movies you can sit down and enjoy or walk away from feeling good about life. It's something you watch because you think "It's Star Wars, how bad can it be?" Every person I know that's seen it has had that thought. Then they watch it and their world became a darker place.

Do I recommend you watch this? Yes, because I'm a sick bastard who will also suggest you watch The Room.

Seriously though, this is really as bad as people say it is? I don't want to waste my time by daring to sit through it all.

Well, it isn't one of those movies you can sit down and enjoy or walk away from feeling good about life. It's something you watch because you think "It's Star Wars, how bad can it be?" Every person I know that's seen it has had that thought. Then they watch it and their world became a darker place.

Do I recommend you watch this? Yes, because I'm a sick bastard who will also suggest you watch The Room.

"I saved dem bondles, dey are crazy!"

"I already ordered a pizza"

"Haha, you theenk of everything!"

Logged

"Many others since have tried & failed at making a watchable parasite slug movie" - LilCerberus

Call me weird, but this thing's problem is its execution, not its concept. Han trying to get Chewie to his homeworld for an important religious celebration, and the Empire using this opportunity to try and catch them? That's a great setup right there. It's what they do with it that makes it suck. And as odd as most of it is, it wouldn't suck so much if stuff actually happened to advance what little plot there is. Instead, it's 90% "we watch other people watch stuff."

-Lumpy watches some weird interpretive dance routine on a holographic device.-Mala watches a cooking show.-Itchy watches some woman sing to him. (And gets way too excited about it.)-The Imperial guard watches a Jefferson Starship video.-Lumpy watches a Heavy Metal-esque cartoon.-Lumpy watches an instructional video about how to fix his toy.-The Imperials watch a show about a cantina being shut down.

Seriously. I can take all the other weirdness in this thing, but watching other people watch TV isn't my idea of a good time.

And how cool (or at least more interesting) would the special have been if it'd been entirely animated like the cartoon segment?

And regarding the instructional video, the toy company's quality control must suck if they used the take were the robot host has difficulty speaking and shuts down halfway through. And if that's the take they went with, I'd hate to see what the previous attempts were like. Sheesh. And I thought instructions were useless in this galaxy.

Explaining the cartoon's events in-universe, I always assumed it was an animated Rebel propaganda video based on real, recent events. Although maybe I'm giving the screenwriters too much credit. More likely the special's writers just couldn't think of where to include the stuff about Boba Fett and the sleeping virus and someone said "Just have the characters watch it on TV." Ditto the stuff involving Bea Arthur's cantina.